A Contemporary Riverside House Split Into Two Contrasting Volumes
An important part of every architectural project is determining the type of relationship that a building will have with its surroundings. A lot of residential projects focus on establishing a close bond between the actual living spaces and the outdoor areas surrounding them and many put an emphasis on the views which can be admired from inside and outside the house.
The Herba House was an interesting project in that regard. It’s located in Torun, Poland, on a piece of land placed between two protected zones, near the historic city center. It was designed and built by architecture office Pracownia Projectowa Jakub Sucharski and it offers 700 square meters of living space in total which are organized on several different floors without various degrees of privacy.
There are two main sections of the house. One is a structure adjacent to the street, with a black exterior and a gabled roof and the other is a much more open structure with big glass walls, terraces and a flat roof. The first volume contains the garage, laundry room and a series of service and technical areas. The other one is where the living spaces, kitchen, bedrooms and a few other spaces are situated. It has a beautiful view of the river, with big lush trees framing it from both sides. A lot of attention was given to the indoor-outdoor relationship, a major objective for the architects being to blur the boundaries between the house and the surroundings. They managed to do that through a series of different strategies which involved using the same type of wood for the floors of the interior and the exterior spaces, hiding the window profiles and including several mini indoor gardens and green spaces throughout the house.
Photographs: Kuba Szopka, Jakub Certowicz